Don't you just hate it when you're doing a spot of gardening, the sun is shining, the woman you love is smiling broadly from the balcony above and everything is just perfect? I bloody do - especially when a huge winged demon swoops from the sky and makes off with the person you intend to marry and, to make matters worse, you're blamed for the missing female's predicament.

And doesn't it really get up your nose when, after all the above has happened, you're forced to travel through countless levels of platform action which are interleaved with a few horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up sub-games? If so, then you can imagine exactly how perturbed the hero of Krisalis's platform romp felt after fate took an instant dislike to him.

There were rumours that Arabian Nights was intended as a 'filler' between now and whenever Soccer Kid is released but this is, quite simply, not true. Both games evolved from the basic game engine but, so I'm told, there was intense rivalry between the two programming teams. It even reached the stage where monitors were covered whenever a member of Soccer Kid's coding team walked into a room where Arabian Nights was running. And, apparently, when the Arabian Nights demo appeared on a rival magazine, the Soccer Kid boys rushed out and purchased it, just so they could see how the opposition was shaping up. It's just a shame there aren't fourteen other companies interested in that particular magazine.

Still, I've managed to deviate a little. Let's take a good look at the game but, I must warn you, if you're currently finishing off another platform game for Krisalis then what's to follow might make for bad news.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to fill a review panel with praise for new platform games. We've had Flashback, Lionheart, Superfrog (that's a few pages earlier, if you don't know) and now Arabian Nights. Can someone please release a bad game so I can have a go at it instead of using my superlative vocabulary up in one go? Still, if I have to give praise then I'm not afraid to do so and there's no doubt that Arabian Nights deserves it by the bucketload. It goes without saying that everything is superbly implemented, with a responsive main character, some excellent graphics, challenging level layouts and a few neat touches thrown in for good measure. The way the game is divided into scrolling sections and semi-static screens is brilliant and really helps to break up the levels and surprise the gamer with hazards which appear just before they need to be reacted to. Like Hudson Hawk, if you want to succeed in your quest you really need to take things easy and not rush through the game at high speed, as doing this often results in a frequent return to the Game Over screen. The difficulty curve is perfectly judged; just when you begin to think that everything is a walkover and that there's no real challenge - wham! - you're presented with some situations which would tax a real gaming Cod (i.e, me) no end. I'm pleased that the manual doesn't really give much indication to each level's objective as this means that there's a lot of exploring and experimenting to be done before you realise exactly what needs to be achieved. In short, this is a superb game which will definitely take some cracking - Soccer Kid is going to have to do a lot of work in the box, Brian.

This is a classic little game here, I'm not sure of its success, but I think it hit the top selling category, althought not groundbreaking it did have some quite uniqe concepts... Such as the item using to progress further in the level. You play this gardener person, and he goes up to see the princess when she is kidnapped, and he gets blamed, so u gotta get out of the deep dungeons, and then trek across the perilous lands to find your beloved princess!

Along the way you must swish baddies, help people, for return help, collect currency (different on nearly every level) and basically its a cool game.

It also has some funny elements, and is very humor oriented. If you like platformers, you will love this game, if you like adventures, you will want to marry this game!

Good graphics, good music and variegated levels. The little gardener guy, is about to save the princess of the castle, who was captured by a huge dragon. Let's help him!